A Marriage Story

There they are, radiant on their wedding day: Václav and Ivana Strnad, two young architecture students who can’t wait to build a life together. Helena Třeštíková first followed them for her TV series Marriage Stories, and then continued to do so, for 35 years. The couple raised five children—an unusually large family in socialist Czechoslovakia—and after the fall of communism, they started their own business in Prague.

Their married life unfolds, with all the ups and downs that come with it. One of their children almost goes completely out of control, Ivana suffers from depression, and business at the furniture store takes a nosedive, but the Strnads persevere—until the relationship that Václav and Ivana began decades earlier is shaken to its foundations by a deep marital crisis. Filled with doubt, Václav wonders what he has been working so hard for all these years.